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Sunday, November 24, 2013

I am currently very busy with my diorama for the Hobbylink TV model completion. It is very time consuming as everything I am doing is a first time experience. Every step requires experimentation and trials before I go ahead and do it on the model. Thank god I had 4 months to work on it otherwise I would have thrown in the towel by now.

In between this and that, I have also been working on another of my overdue projects. This one I present today is very dear to my heart. Allow me to present Jotunta the Untamed. Quite a name. All will be explained when I write up her story and that of her current rider Wolf Guard Foral the Handsome.

In the meantime I have been working on her as a Wolf Guard bike for my Swiftclaw Bikers. I wanted the model to be physically different. I did not only want Jotunta to have more elaborate armour, I also wanted the bike to be of a different yet similar design. Something that shows it is older and modified. This is what I came up with:

The pictures above show the first stages of work that went in to the project. Many mistakes were made and many revisions were done before I took this pictures. Nonetheless when I arrived at this stage I was still not satisfied.

By elongating the front part to make the bike look more like an easy rider, I inadvertently made it look rather empty in the middle. There are choppers that have this look, but I did not think it suited a Space Marine bike. Space marines are all about 'bulkiness' after all.

So I went about fattening her out a bit. I did this by adding parts to the engine section, and adding more bulk to the gas tank with milliput.

As you can see, the added parts fill the bike out a whole lot more, making her more interesting visually and as a side effect also adds realism to the model. The model is not finished yet. The next stage are the details, and that is where the real work is.

Well that is all for now. Let me now what you think or how to improve her. If you have any good ideas I am always willing to listen.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Today I present my completed (finally!) WW2 Tiger platoon from the Plastic Soldier Company box set. These were part of my pledge to start finishing up all the open projects on my workbench. I am glad to say they that I am getting there slowing but steadily.

Before I continue, I just want to inform anyone who follows this blog that for the months of November, December and January, I will be posting only twice a month. The reason behind this decision is that I have entered the Hobbylink Japan online modeling completion, and my entry is taking up a lot of precious and limited time that I keep for modeling. To make matters worse I cannot post anything about this project on my blog until after the results are announced in January. Needless to say, this restrains the amount of material I have at my disposal - so a bit of economy is necessary.

That said, it's back to the Tigers.

A few months back I bought this box set from the PSC and I started painting them up about three months ago. In the set you get four very nicely detailed Tiger 1 tanks that are very easy to assemble and need glue to put together. I am no expert on WW2 tanks, so I cannot tell anyone just how accurate they are, but I have read around the net that they pass the test and do the trick.

Well, after putting the whole thing together I started painting them up. The first airbrushed coat was a black undercoat from Vallejo.

The second step was painting the base colour with Dunkelgelb, and then adding white to the Dunkelgelb for highlights. Once again this was all done with my airbrush.

The next step is the camo patterns. I decided to go with just two colours with the Tigers. So I went with red brown strips. I found this pattern online and I thought it was good looking and doable with my current skill level with an airbrush.

When the tanks had dried properly I started with the washes, drybrushing and weathering in general. I wanted a long campaign look to them, so I opted with a bit of heavier weathering. I might have over did it a bit, but as I have said a thousand times, these are just playing pieces to me, so all I am looking for is a presentable look.

Overall I think I have achieved my target, but as always there is a lot of room to improve my technique and approach. I hope you all like them as much as I do. I can't wait to field them and get my arse kicked!

Well that's all for the here and now. Farewell and good health as always.